Diseases, pests, irrigation difficulties and other factors can create regions of dead and/or dying grass and/or bare soil in existing lawns. Prior to sowing seed in these regions, so as to restore the lawn, one must first prepare the ground for planting. To that end, it is necessary to produce indentations or holes (also referred to herein as “perforations”) in the lawn, preferably of a depth and size that maximizes seed-to-soil contact and is suitable for the germination of seed placed therein. The distribution of the holes must have density sufficient to allow the resulting plant growth to form a continuous grassy surface. In addition, it is desirable to provide spacing between the holes, and to the pattern the holes in a non-uniform manner to thereby prevent the resulting grass from having a visually objectionable pattern. A tool optimized for this utility should also be capable of tilling or plowing the neighboring earth; in particular, it is desirable to push up and loosen the soil around the hole so as to create a soft mound of soil that will readily crumble around the seed after watering. Finally, it is further desirable to configure the tool to minimize operator fatigue and muscle strain or, alternatively, to work in conjunction with a powered implement, such as a tractor or small engine.
There are a number of commercially available tools designed to loosen, cut, crumble and/or cultivate garden soil or the like. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,605,907 (Schuring et al.), 4,424,869 (vom Braucke et al.), and 4,678,043 (vom Braucke et al.) disclose various small hand tools specifically designed for such purposes. In addition, a variety of manual and automated lawn seeding machines are known in the art. However, none of the presently available options are capable of producing the optimized lawn perforations as described above while at the same time maximizing efficiency and minimizing operator fatigue. Thus, there remains a clear need in the art for a lawn tool capable of efficiently and effectively preparing a damaged area of lawn for reseeding. The present invention is directed to such a need.